Perhaps there is an essence
of you left behind. A sense
memory, a hint of cinnamon
and winter, a drift of silk
on skin, the cabinet door
that always creaks shut.

Everyone hides their own
secret garden of near forgotten
roses, a scent of rainy backyards
or attics, dusty cedar trunks,
brittle paper, old lavender
and mothballs. What else is folded
with the white gloves, the yellow lace
and birth announcements?

It's hard to tell.
But there are moments
that flash on the edge
of consciousness, little
dharmas, little miracles
when a forgotten smile
cuts through like a knife
in butter, time stands
and whirls at the same
instant. You are with me

only then and I
sometimes wonder if you
can know how right you were
when you said memory
is everything.

Perhaps there is an essence
of you left behind. A sense
memory, a hint of cinnamon
and winter, a drift of silk
on skin, the cabinet door
that always creaks shut.

Everyone hides their own
secret garden of near forgotten
roses, a scent of rainy backyards
or attics, dusty cedar trunks,
brittle paper, old lavender
and mothballs. What else is folded
with the white gloves, the yellow lace
and birth announcements?

It's hard to tell.
But there are moments
that flash on the edge
of consciousness, little
dharmas, little miracles
when a forgotten smile
cuts through like a knife
in butter, time stands
and whirls at the same
instant. You are with me

only then and I
sometimes wonder if you
can know how right you were
when you said memory
is everything.

Memory is everything.
I sit silent with my thoughts
and drift in time.
No regrets.
Okay maybe an occasional sigh,
or wistful thought.
But she deserves that,
we deserve that.
Although there never was a we
to speak of.
Not that I didn't try,
but not hard enough
and not so long
before I moved on.
I lied.
There was a we,
but that was decades ago.
Decades ago
that I whispered into long blonde hair.

The quality of waiting
is pretty strained. I try
to be near my computer at least
I can play patience as I hold
the phone, as I wince
at the music which is soporific
at best, piercing at worst.
Minutes tick by

and I stay calm despite
frequent Nurse Ratched assurance
that my party wants nothing more
than to serve me. I am the most
important customer ever, except
while I am waiting, trying
to remember all three things
I need to ask, in the correct order,
and whether
my pen works.

My party is not even a person,
but a disembodied voice,
a ghost in the machine, sometimes
en espanol para my confusion.
It repeats itself and says I'm sorry
I didn't quite understand that but
artificial intelligence notwithstanding,
I don't think it understands anything.

Isn't it always a shame
the good old days are gone,
when your biggest problem
was asking Mrs. Tulliver
to stop talking to her sister
so you could make a call,
or the kid next door
to get off the line already?

In my lensless nakedness
your lacy garter belt is lostó
those chromed, chained nipple clamps
as well, for all I see
is fuzzy, pale light, as indistinct
as moonlight filtered through high clouds,
a poltergeist, or succubus,
or other restless spirit come
to fuck my complacent, corporeal world.

So I trace your body otherwise:
The round rasp of your voice,
that cat's yowl and purr; the scent
of that upscale perfume crossed with sweat.
I find that I can tap my way along the wall to skin so pure
my very fingertips erect.

And so to, finally, my Dowsing Rod;
the odd, capricious thing below my waist
that always picks you from a crowd
because it knows a well where it can drink
and never, never thirst.

Fabulous week, Lubricant. Your muse must be ecstatic! And great start, Fool and Angeline. I can SO relate to that being stuck on the phone poem. Nothing makes me want to smash things more than phone trees.

Fabulous week, Lubricant. Your muse must be ecstatic! And great start, Fool and Angeline. I can SO relate to that being stuck on the phone poem. Nothing makes me want to smash things more than phone trees.

Yaknow with this move, I have been making tons of calls where I have to machete my way through the phone vines. Moving company, isp, switching my car insurance and on and on. And I can say that the state of automated phone service is very poor. But it did give me something to write about.

perhaps she is, sitting on a bench in McCarren Park
filing her nails, texting friends,
sowing scraps of stale bread for overfed birds.
Or if there's ecstasy in laundry, she would know
how to find it, sifting whites from reds and greens,
cottons from lacy underthings.

She could well be ecstatic in the street,
blessing the sidewalk with her long-limbed stride,
or in a supermarket aisle, picking up kale
and shiitake mushrooms to stir-fry
while watching old Kurosawa movies on AMC.
I don't know, really,

when or if she ever is,
nor if her ecstasy takes form as Saint Teresa of Avila
or Bonnie Raitt. I can only wish
for my own improvident, impudent dream,
of twisted sheets and tousled hair
and little breathless whimperings.

The quality of waiting
is pretty strained. I try
to be near my computer at least
I can play patience as I hold
the phone, as I wince
at the music which is soporific
at best, piercing at worst.
Minutes tick by

and I stay calm despite
frequent Nurse Ratched assurance
that my party wants nothing more
than to serve me. I am the most
important customer ever, except
while I am waiting, trying
to remember all three things
I need to ask, in the correct order,
and whether
my pen works.

My party is not even a person,
but a disembodied voice,
a ghost in the machine, sometimes
en espanol para my confusion.
It repeats itself and says I'm sorry
I didn't quite understand that but
artificial intelligence notwithstanding,
I don't think it understands anything.

Isn't it always a shame
the good old days are gone,
when your biggest problem
was asking Mrs. Tulliver
to stop talking to her sister
so you could make a call,
or the kid next door
to get off the line already?

I just mimic Ange for the irritation value...

So was it yesterday
I could hardly wait
for that once a week call?
Feeding coins into a machine
as I listened to your tinny voice
so many thousands of miles away.
Hearing the sound of children,
my children,
as we spoke quickly,
of what was,
what is,
and what we want to be.
Compressing images
into minutes,
sorrow into seconds
and love into words
spoke frantically.
Handset hard
and cold in my hand,
against my cheek,
offered metaphor for the trials
of long ago.
Opening the door to the phonebooth,
entering a world so far away from mine.

So was it yesterday
I could hardly wait
for that once a week call?
Feeding coins into a machine
as I listened to your tinny voice
so many thousands of miles away.
Hearing the sound of children,
my children,
as we spoke quickly,
of what was,
what is,
and what we want to be.
Compressing images
into minutes,
sorrow into seconds
and love into words
spoke frantically.
Handset hard
and cold in my hand,
against my cheek,
offered metaphor for the trials
of long ago.
Opening the door to the phonebooth,
entering a world so far away from mine.

I take it as hommage.

For T With Ever

Six years of us,
cooking pots and pillows,
Ginsberg and Piercy,
Lou Reed and Jay Farrar,
the chair with the leather seat
that changed its mind
and decided to tag along,
all the passion, the laughing,
furniture with the dents
and dings to prove it.
A prayerful night of emergency

room, stained with tears
and promises. All of it, all
of it parceled into boxes,
bags stuffed with three
in a space for two, and oh so
carefully fitted like us, hand
in hand, shoulders brushing,
eyes speaking and bundled
like spoons in a drawer,
off we scoot.